Categorical imperative 4.0 — why we get fucked by false beliefs and are not honest with ourselves — and how to fix this
Question everything. Identify false beliefs and replace them with honest behavior matching your own values. Live a fulfilled life with your best friend. The end.
Do you sometimes wonder, why your life seems like it’s on everyday auto-pilot without you being in the driver’s seat anymore? Do you not understand why your marriage, relationship or dating life doesn’t go the way you want to, even though you are trying really hard? Do you feel like your work life is not going anywhere and the stuff you do seems meaningless and dull?
Well, I have certainly been there. After a major breakup (that hurt like a bitch, pun somewhat intended) it basically shattered not just the relationship with the ‘love of my life’ but also tore my entire belief system into pieces. My days since then mostly felt like I am only wafting from day to day. Heartfelt happiness only came back in very seldom and brief glimpses and I thus tortured myself through a shit ton of self-help literature that basically left me feeling even more miserable, because I didn’t see any real changes and didn’t know why. I also began questioning the point of my job and why we do everything we do. And of course re-establishing a new romantic relationship just wouldn’t work out, even though I was trying to be a ‘really good guy’. And the fact that all the ‘assholes’ left and right of me were getting laid or living in supposedly happy relationships just put the last nail in my coffin of some full-fledged why-the-fuck Weltschmerz (ok, now I really sound depressed — don’t worry, I’m fine, really).
This is not supposed to be your number 61241 self-help article only ‘pleasuring yourself’ with your problems and providing band-aid solutions. I am trying to get down to the root of the problem here — and perhaps solve it once and for all. Because I feel like I recently and suddenly got a little closer to the ‘why’ of all of this misery and I thought I might share and discuss it with you here. You’re welcome.
After two years of nearly daily struggle, something that people would probably call a ‘moment of clarity’ just hit me while I was already in bed after another unproductive and meaningless day:
I don’t have to do anything. And: I am bullshitting myself and others on a daily basis because of that.
This might sound trivial, off-putting or wrong to you, but let me explain where these thoughts led me.
You call it ‘just the way things are’, I call it a big pile of false beliefs
If you are in a cycle of things not working out the way you want them to, things don’t feel right or you are just plain miserable, it is an important first step to question absolutely everything around you. Every time you believe something just is a certain way or other people tell you that you have to act in a certain way, you should immediately question if that is actually true. I am not saying that everything around you is a hoax (because I don’t believe in conspiracy theories either, point being made), but most of the time these things are not facts but just beliefs — and thus not universally true. The real truth is that we live in something that some people call ‘matrix’, ‘social programming’, ‘brainwash’, ‘narratives’, ‘dogma’ or ‘belief systems’. Whatever you want to call it, I call it false or limiting beliefs, because I like that one the most and it doesn’t have some ninities Sci-Fi or tin-foil-hat vibe to it.
Where do these false beliefs come from? They stem from a life-long conditioning of yourself — by your family, your friends, your (ex-)partners, society, governments, schools, companies etc. They were and still are (unconsciously and consciously) making you believe certain things about life in general and about yourself specifically and often put you under the spell of external expectations. You can’t blame the people, really, because they have been conditioned themselves and don’t know any better either.
And here is the problem now: most of the time these beliefs are actually not true. I’ll give you some examples in just a minute to proof it to you. You might get pissed off, because these things sometimes go really deep with us, since we have been told and thus believed it throughout our whole lives. And don’t take my word for it, but as an exercise, ask yourself if you believe these common social and personal narratives and question them for a second. So, here we go: You might be led by false beliefs systems if…
Personal life beliefs
- …you think you are just born as a … (shy person, procrastinator, overweight person, fill in the blanks with anything else plain negative or limiting) — and you believe that this won’t ever change.
- …you are controlled by your feelings and emotions all the time — and believe you have no power over this.
- …you think that a concept like time really exists and thus constantly live in the past or plan the future instead of living in the here and now.
- …you are not thankful for even ‘simple’ things like a having a roof on top of your head or the fact of merely being alive.
- …you are usually blaming others for things not going the way desired and put yourself in the role of the victim constantly.
Work life beliefs
- …you think you have to work hard to achieve something in life and if it’s not hard, it’s not of real value.
- …you think that achievements in the future alone (“when I am the new head of the department”) and possessions (“when I have the new iPhone”) will make you happy or complete.
- …you are always looking for one reason why things can’t work instead of looking for ten reasons why things could work and therefore decide it’s not worth acting on it.
- …you think solutions to your work/personal problems can only be valid if they are difficult, hard to attain and not easy and quick; if someone confronts you with an easy solution to your problems, you always respond with “yes, but…” to look for reasons not to get out of your comfort zone. You thus generally believe that ‘life is hard’ and ‘life can’t always be easy’.
- …you are not learning from your past and even by acting the same way, you still expect different results (which is the definition of insanity, how Albert Einstein supposedly, but probably not really said).
Relationships beliefs
- …you believe there is something like ‘Mr./Mrs. Right’ and think that he or she will make you happy once you find him or her.
- …you believe being single or alone is a bad thing that needs to be fixed by getting in a relationship sometime later in your life.
- …you believe that in a world full of wife-beater wearing, beer drinking, PlayStation playing jerks, if you only act like ‘the perfect boyfriend/husband’ there is no other way but for your girlfriend/wife to love you.
- …you listen to love songs or watch romantic movies, which are 100% defined by drama and ‘working for the true lover’ and thus reinforce your belief of what real love is. Or like Eckhart Tolle said: “When something goes wrong, a movie becomes interesting.”
- …you are judging other people and don’t realize that every judgement of others is also self-judgement.
And last but not least: “you are afraid of changing your life to a state of being truly free”.
The list can be continued almost infinitely.
So, did you catch yourself in the list believing one or more points? If so, I believe you should at least once try to question them completely. I am not saying they are always or completely false, but at least most of the time. And more importantly, they all stem from external beliefs of others and their expectations and should therefore be questioned anyway. I know it’s easy and comfortable to ‘just believe’ it, just because everybody says so, but be aware that it doesn’t make things automatically true. If you think about it, you will realize these false beliefs can have a limiting and sometimes directly negative effect on your own life.
“I almost ‘automagically’ got going. It was a lot easier than I always believed it would be.”
I myself have been trapped in a lot of these beliefs that made my life miserable or at least unnecessarily hard: in work-life, for instance while writing my PhD thesis, I believed narratives of a PhD thesis being ‘extremely difficult and lengthy to write’ and a dissertation ‘always having to be’ a certain way. These imaginary expectations however did not match with my own personal beliefs for my research project and only after I realized it and wrote a big, fat “Don’t write somebody else’s PhD!!” on my motivational wall next to my desk, I almost automagically (see what I did there?) got going. It was a lot easier than I always believed it would be.
In personal life I was always told that being a procrastinator with everything is a bad thing — and thus constantly tried to change and failed every single time (or just postponed the change). Only when I realized that I could use this as an advantage (e.g. being really good with doing things under pressure) I realized there was no reason to change. Besides, just like in the PhD example mentioned above, the moment I stopped telling myself that so-called ‘hard work’ is actually ‘hard’, well, it instantly became easier and sometimes even real fun.
And finally: being brainwashed by movies and disgusted by fellow men that showed something that seemed to me like ‘bad behavior’ (aka being ‘assholes’ towards women) and me always acting like your typical textbook ‘good guy’ to earn my ex-wife’s or ex-girlfriend’s affection, I was being left wondering why this strategy never ever works. Only to realize later, that not only can’t attraction be ‘earned’, but also my motives that I would have sworn were completely and utterly altruistic in fact were not — I was actually wanting something in return. So due to external false beliefs, being the alleged ‘good guy’ really meant I wasn’t being honest with myself and others and that is problematic.
But even though realizing the problem is important as a first impulse, what are solutions for this? Well, first of all I always found that being aware of the problem already makes it dissolve a bit by itself or at least gets rid of a lot of pressure. In this case, by ‘pressure’ I mean social expectations, faith sets that are either completely wrong or just don’t fit for you. Try it out yourself by questioning absolutely everything around you. You may be surprised by how your perspective may completely change towards many things. I call this method ‘categorical imperative 4.0’ and I’ll now explain what I mean by that.
Living in categorical imperative 4.0 —extending a theoretical model
(Quick disclaimer: in this part, it gets a little messy and complicated — if you just want the easy solution, just skip to the next chapter. Really. If not, please continue.)
Now, Jan, I hear you say, why do you think that living in a world full of extraneous beliefs necessarily leads to unhappiness? My answer is: because these external narratives more than often don’t match with our own, true desires and beliefs within ourselves — and living the life we all actually want. You know, this kind of life we think we will live “once we have reached xyz” (which is another completely false belief that this will work). Consequently, this leads to an incongruity of our real, honest intents and thus our thoughts, words and actions. Basically, we are constantly lying to either others and more importantly: ourselves. Wait… what? Let me explain — or better, let me get some help from old Immanuel Kant and his ‘categorical imperative’ and transfer this concept into our #yolo world (that’s why I called it “4.0”, I thought it looked really cool and up-to-date and would get your attention — if you are still reading, I must have been successful). Ok, seriously now, here are two formulations of his universal ethical principle:
Categorical imperative #1: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
Categorical imperative #2: “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”
I don’t want to get too much into these concepts or too philosophical here, but if you are interested in more, one of my favorite writers, Mark Manson, wrote a brilliant article about it in detail. For making my point here, I’d like to suggest a slightly different, extended formulation of a categorical imperative that tries to also question beliefs (and thus test if they are false or limiting). Here is my suggestion (totally up for debate):
“Question all of your thoughts, words and actions: ask if they are based on facts and own beliefs or external, false and limiting beliefs and thus if you are being truly honest with yourself and others.”
Let it sink in for a minute. And try to think of some examples. It might be weird at first and you will come up with lots of “yes, buts…”, but trust me: the longer you think about it, the less true ‘facts’ about life you will find.
Why is basing your thoughts, words and actions on external, false and limiting beliefs problematic? Because it creates a chain of mayhem that almost always goes the same way:
External, false and limiting belief → doesn’t match with own, real beliefs and honest intentions deep inside of you → dishonest behavior with yourself and others → drama, chaos and personal unhappiness.
So much for theory. Let’s see how this translates into more practical scenarios.
Living in categorical imperative 4.0 in practice — question everything and replace it with your very own beliefs and values
If you still don’t get what I am talking about, don’t worry, I’ll try to help you with some illustrative examples. Again, you might find yourself in these:
“If you found ‘Mr./Mrs. Right’ he or she will make you happy once you find him or her.”
Not only can’t (and shouldn’t) a partner complete you (and anything coming from outside), because you can only be complete in yourself. Besides, this false belief will also make you dependent on something you have no power of. That means you can’t make it happen and you can’t force it to stay. However, since you will still try to force things, you will become dishonest with others while dating (because for example you will put on an act to appear differently than you actually are) and if things go sideways, you will have not developed the ability to just be happy and content with yourself. If you however know this is a false belief, then you will realize you can only be complete in yourself and thus will give (in any kinds of relationships by the way) only with truly altruistic motives, because you do not need anything in return.
“If you get certain achievements in the future (“When I am the new head of the department”) or possessions (“When I have the new iPhone”) you will be happy or complete.”
Job titles and materialistic things have no value in themselves. A ‘head of yada yada’ title, telling everyone to be ‘working for xyz Corp.’, hell, even my PhD is something humans invented and attributed artificial value to it. It doesn’t have any real value on its own. Just like money by the way; it’s just printed paper that we all agreed upon it has value. The same goes for things that we all drool at, like the new gorgeous, magical, beautiful iPhone — it’s in fact just a piece of metal, plastic and glass (watch the video in the link above to realize how bananas this actually is). Sure, you also buy it because it can do certain things, but so could a 200 dollar phone. We pay the insane 1000+ dollar premium, since we falsely believe it will make us happier and fill a hole in ourselves, because then people will see us differently. And of course we will then talk with others about having bought the new iPhone too, to fill the even bigger hole of inner shame that we spent so much money on something that in fact didn’t deliver on the ‘gorgeous, magical, beautiful’ happiness promise completely. And don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying ‘don’t buy things’ anymore, just don’t be solely dependent on it (whereas the minimalist movement starts to make sense here). I am just saying it’s necessary to be really, really honest and question if you truly want it for yourself (for example to use it to work on a real purpose) or if you have just been lead by false beliefs that you will be happier in some way (i.e. brainwashed by advertisements). And to get to the first point: analogically the same goes for any kind of job achievement — I am not saying ‘sit on the couch all day and do nothing’, because it’s a fact that you would probably quickly die of starvation (quick scenario). I am saying question the motives of your work and job: are you doing it because someone told you to, because ‘there is no other alternative’ or ‘work is just work, it can’t always be fun’ (all false) — or are you doing it out of some altruistic purpose, like helping others and thus making the world a better place?
“I can’t change xyz about my life — that’s just how I am and always will be.”
This is also a very common one. And usually something must have happened in your past, probably in your childhood, and you just can’t seem to get rid of it. If for example you feel that you are ‘not good enough’ to ever get a partner that you truly desire, then this will probably be true — unless you simply change the way you think about and believe this. This is also what’s loosely referred to as the law of attraction. However, if you start questioning this belief and simply stop believing that this is true, you will free yourself from something that wasn’t true in the first place and consequently other people will sense this and you will automatically become more attractive. The same goes for chronic procrastinators, like I used to believe I was one, and believed that this won’t ever change. Instead I realized that there is no such thing and besides some sleepless nights during university it never had any real negative consequences. But by believing this and also the narrative that ‘university life is hard’ and ‘you have to start studying early’, of course I was anxious about starting a paper or studying for a test and that’s why I put things off. If I had believed that I am a pragmatic worker that always worked great under pressure, then I would have probably had a much more relaxed university career.
Always ask yourself, with everything you do or say: are the things I believe (and thus think, say or do) really universally true? If not, you are probably not honest with yourself and others and are therefore violating Kant’s original categorical imperative, too, by the way. If you however replace these beliefs with some that match your very own values, principles, purposes and goals, then this will lead to a much more fulfilled and happy life. But since Kant’s original categorical imperative is still widely regarded as ‘valid’ in today’s philosophy and world, let’s see if it also works with the extended version ‘4.0 version’ that is based on identifying false beliefs:
Categorical imperative test #1: “With everything you do, you should want for it to become a universal law”:
If my actions are based on false beliefs then my actions will be a lie against others (e.g. I act like I am being ‘greater’ than I actually am, so people love me, because I think that I am not good enough and need to be in a relationship to be happy) or a lie against myself (e.g. I act against what I truly want and value, because I believe I ‘just have to’ be a certain way). Kant would have argued that especially lying can never become a universal law, therefore it means that the ‘original version’ can also be used to test if my actions are a ‘bad’ result of false beliefs.
Categorical imperative test #2: “People or yourself should never be a means to an end, but always an end”:
If my actions are based on false beliefs then they will result in actions which either make other people a means to an end (e.g. I use relationships to make me happy, because I think they will make me complete or fulfilled) or I make myself a means to an end (I lie to myself that the new iPhone will make me happy; I betray my own values, because I think I ‘have to’ do a certain money job). Again, this is a clear violation of Kant’s categorical imperative. To proof it even further, we can also try a counter check to see if ‘right’ behavior (not based on false beliefs) leads to no violation: If I don’t act according to false beliefs, then I am honest to myself and others, e.g. I do what I truly feel that I want to do (for instance help improve education) and I thereby neither betray my own values, nor am I lying to others, because I am 100% altruistic. This, again, could of course be a universal law, too.
What if though, as another test, you’d for example argue: “What if I personally identify ‘killing people’ as a false narrative and for some screwed up reason I believe that this goes along with my own values, how will this work then?”. Well, I’d say that even with the newly created categorical imperative 4.0, the old ones are by no means replaced or outdated (as shown above, too). Therefore with my ‘value’ of shooting people in the face, I could never wish for this to become a universal law (and am using people as a means to an end of proving my fucked up self-righteousness or something) and therefore it is in fact not a false belief or narrative — and consequently there is a law against it for good reason.
However, questioning and testing for false beliefs through the old and new categorical imperative is just a first step. I suggest for it to properly lead to a happier and more fulfilled life, some extra measures need to be taken. I’ll now explain how this can be done precisely.
The short term solution for now? Take care of your best friend.
I know that people like “5 easy steps” solutions (and I do too) and even though they might look simple by just reading them, I am telling you that they will probably take effort and continuous practice. But first things first:
1.) Find your very own values, principles, purposes and goals (that are intrinsic and not external). It is important to know these, because they will be the ‘guiding star’ when having identified numerous false beliefs and you are now wondering what you should do with your life now. But try to be careful and take your time to see if these values really stem from inside of you and are not polluted or dependent on external beliefs once again. If that seems hard for you, read this great article and ask yourself what your 8-year-old self would want or what makes you forget to eat and poop.
2.) Question everything that you do, everything that you believe and everything that people say. Basically continuously question the whole world around you. Live in ‘categorical imperative 4.0 mode’ and ask yourself: are my thoughts, words and actions actually just based facts and own beliefs or external, false and limiting beliefs? Am I being truly honest with myself and others? Keep in mind that I am not saying ‘change everything in your life immediately’ but just ‘question everything’. That’s important —this new awareness will guide you to take action, if necessary. And to distinguish if things are false or not, please continue to step three:
3.) Be honest with yourself. Especially this part is key for this new made-up-by-me categorical imperative — don’t bullshit yourself, generally and with your actions in every part of life. Don’t say you love your girlfriend unconditionally, when on the other hand you just love her for the affection she gives you. Don’t say you want to have children because this is the meaning of life, whereas in reality you are just pressured by society or shit-faced scared of not leaving some kind of legacy in this world the few years you are alive. Don’t say you just simply enjoy having a nice car/apartment/suit/watch, whereas on the other hand you are always secretly garnering for other people’s approval.
4.) Embrace your aloneness. Only when being alone you can think consciously and thus grow immensely. You might not think so now, but you are your best friend after all — and you will realize this, when you have let go of external belief systems. The real you is already inside of you. It always has been from the moment you were born. Treat and work on yourself that way. After a while (and working towards your purpose) you will notice that you are complete within yourself and will need almost nothing from outside and are thus much less dependent — which will prevent you from lots of drama in the future. Everything you need is already there — it was just another narrative that told you that you need more than that to be truly complete and happy.
5.) Follow your own vision of life and don’t let any external circumstances and external beliefs circumvent who you are. Like I said, it will take continuous effort, because you are like a massive ship that has been going into a certain direction led by external beliefs, but a bit of time and patience will help you change course.
Done. Who says that self-help has to be hard and lengthy (there, another false belief)? However, it has to be practiced. If these points mentioned above seem a bit unwieldy to you, I’d suggest to at least try out number two as a sort of ‘meditation’ and go from there.
There is no such thing as ‘reality’ or ‘the way things are’. It is all up to me and how I see things.
I followed these steps for myself. In relationships I gave up on false beliefs that you ‘have to have a relationship’ or ‘love needs to be/feel a certain way’ and consequently focused on working on my own happiness, because I suddenly wasn’t so dependent on that tiring quest for ‘Mrs. Right’ anymore. In work, I realized there is hardly anything that can’t be questioned (and mostly also changed) and after years of being employed in a system that did not entirely share the way I want to think and act, I became a freelance trainer and consultant and haven’t been this happy in a long time. In personal life I realized how incredibly judgmental and interpretive I have been with almost all human behaviors around me. “Oh, he didn’t write back? He must be mad at me. If he cared he would clearly write me back. That’s just how things are.” — false belief nonsense, conditioned insecurity in combination with expectations and just my interpretation. The other one was just busy and wrote back later. Or as the saying goes: “We always condemn most in others, that which we most fear in ourselves”.
Like a sort of enlightenment 4.0, after all these years the search for a ‘happier me’ finally made sense and came together. Because I realized, and this is important, it is only up to me. There is no such thing as reality or the way things are. It is all up to me and how I see things. Everything is my reality and I can decide how I want to see every single thing in my life today — and if I do, all drama, negativity and sadness will automatically melt away. I was born already complete and perfect — most of the ‘problems’ in my life are just personal and social beliefs that I have been conditioned to throughout my entire life. They are imaginary constructs. But the good news is: the blue sky (my inner true, complete and perfect me) has always been and will always be there as long as I live. I just need to get rid of the clouds. And I can do this today.
A quote out of Steve Job’s famous “Stanford Commencement Speech” that I always cherished now finally made even more sense:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
It’s your choice. Try it out, if you like: question everything. Today. And see for yourself what happens with the view on the world and people around you. After all, it is a bit like taking the red pill and escaping the matrix — not a computer-generated matrix, just one made up of tons of false beliefs.
But don’t take my word for it. After all, I might be putting out an extraneous belief here too — but I am happy to discuss if this one is true.
